The Stolen Child
by Cris
Summary: What can a king do to heal pain that is not his?
1. A New Arrival

Beyond the edge of darkness, before the bright edge of the moon's smile, just in that place where the stars cast shadows and music is a tangible thing, a white owl soared through air as thick as damp cotton. It didn't belong there, but swooped meaningfully through the night—day—it didn't matter. 

A screaming cry rent the night, and the owl ducked lower. Lower…lower…toward the ground below that the night-bird could neither see nor hear. No rustling trees. No trickling water. And it was in that moment that the bird's outline wavered, melted, blended into the outline of a tall man with blond hair, a man dressed like a strange cross between a rock star and a king. He was covered in stardust as, tall and pale, he strode across the black earth and bent to pick up a child. 

The infant did not stop crying, and in that place where life and death have no meaning, the owl-man cradled the tiny being to his heart. He pressed the warm, wet body to his chest, held the too-heavy head in a gloved hand. So tiny…the tiniest he'd been called to take away. People sent away bigger babies, toddlers, even small children. They didn't believe in the magic enough to wish away adolescents, and he wouldn't have taken them anyway. But this baby was newly born, young enough that the parents should still be doting, young enough that the earthy-mineral smell of blood and placenta had not worn off and the eyes were not yet open. 

"You should not even be out of a mortal hospital, little one," the owl-man said, and he rocked the newborn soothingly. "Hushhh, now," he crooned, a strange sound from a man made of ice and fog. His eyes closed, mismatched in color but identical in their pain, as he swayed his torso, swiveling, settling into soothing motion. Slowly the child stopped crying. 

"Time to go," the man whispered. "Then we will find out what's to be done with you." He looked at the top of the infant's head, dark, silky hair matted down with the close, damp heat. "Beautiful child. Who could possibly look at you and not want you?" He lifted one miniscule fist and kissed the closed fingers. "So tiny…tinier than baby goblins." And with that his shape melted again. Instead of the owl, the wavering outline turned into mist…and then was gone. 


	2. The Williams Girl

Sarah pushed open the door of the hospital—cold glass and stainless steel—and concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other.   Slowly, slowly, she made her way to the car she had parked there the day before.  It had been a relatively simple procedure, the pain of which was still fogged in her mind by the drugs they had given her.  

She fingered a knife in her pocket as she felt the eyes of the dirty men planting trees in the parking lot medians.  She didn't like their dark eyes, didn't like their skin, burned and browned from the sun, didn't like their crooked teeth or the harsh quality of their syllables as they spoke to each other, laughed.   That male laughter sent chills down her spine and made her jaw tighten with both fear and anger.  The hot sun beat down though it was only midmorning.   It would be hotter later.  

The dry Western heat was something entirely different from the rain of her childhood memories.  Rain….   It rained here, sometimes.   Not often.

When she ran from the place of her birth, all Sarah had wanted was a foreign city, a foreign house where nobody dared question how she had changed, where no one narrowed their eyes and whispered about _that Williams girl_.   She had heard it all.   She didn't want to hear it any more.   

The public hospital didn't keep close tabs on its patients.   That was why Sarah had driven into the _barrio_ instead of keeping to the parts of town where she felt safe.   The cracked cement always made her nervous, the black and red and blue paint in garbled letters sprayed on the wall made her afraid, but she didn't show it.  She had not been hassled yet, but there were reasons for that.   Gone now.  She would have to be more careful.  The switchblade in her pocket made her feel more secure.

Sarah drove slowly, the little Jeep that had been a guilt present from her father as dependable as always.  It had carried her across too many state lines for her to count, across the Bible Belt and the plains, across the barren Badlands, across sandy desert, finally to this place, not a mecca but at least someplace where people lived, where there was life, where she could start again.  

The savings from babysitting and other odd jobs had landed her a tiny house for rent in a quiet neighborhood.  It wasn't in a part of town where people watered their lawns, but they were miles away from anywhere that chickens scratched in the dust.   The yards were fenced with chain link—economic, responsible, clean.  Sarah liked the otherworldliness of the thick stucco, the low arched doorways, the red tile patio out back, the red tile roof.  She didn't mind that rattlesnakes and scorpions lived in the shale pile out in the back of her house.  She never went back there anyway.  It was too hot outside.   She saw little girls and little boys outside playing with no shirts on, dancing in the backyard plastic pools in just their underwear, and she smiled.  Never in her neighborhood back home would girls be allowed to do that.   Even at five, six years old their bodies were things to hide.  

She couldn't waitress, couldn't be a secretary, couldn't even earn money in the ways she refused to earn it.  So she started cooking at a little New England restaurant, hidden away in the back, where her fingers could do what they knew how to do.   Here Mexican restaurants went out of business every day when half the population could cook better than the restaurants.   Here down-home cooking meant tortillas and carne asada, tacos piled high with meat and lettuce and tomato, tamales cooked in the corn husk.  Everything smelled of lime, salsa, frying corn oil.  Here, simple things like chowder and fat baked potatoes with sour cream, butter, chives, were the exotic.  A New England restaurant did very well.  

On the weekends Sarah slept, sometimes watched TV, and played with her landlady's pottery wheel.  She would never achieve the level of skill that the women who set out blankets and displayed their wares on the roadside did, but kicking the wheel rhythmically and feeling the damp earth mold against her fingers was soothing.   It soothed the mounting fear which always seemed to clutch at her throat.  It soothed her thoughts of the future.  It soothed her aching heart, soothed her bitter memories of rejection.  It soothed the rumblings within her.  

Nobody asked for her story.  Half of them would not have understood it anyway, her language being the language of the rich in El Cajon, her new town.  El Cajon, just minutes from San Diego.  El Cajon, where the street signs ran in both Spanish and English, where the language of the construction workers was foreign to her and the telephone operator's voice was too thickly accented to understand.  Nobody asked for her story because they already knew it, already knew what so many others had said before.  Some spoke of betrayal, others of misunderstanding.   Some, like Sarah, wept for what they had never had in the first place.  All had the same haunted look in their eyes—_you can't go home again._   Most wasted away.   

It had been on the long side of half a year since Sarah had last laughed.   That was the day the mind-numbing pain had sent her to the public hospital, to the _barrio_ she feared so.   That was the day she left part of herself there, the part she swore she didn't want, the part that was tainted.   Could never be good.

Yet still, it was the hardest thing she had done to walk out those hospital doors that day.  Well, the second hardest.  Running here, running toward her new life, had been easy.  A duffel bag of clothes, some food to start out with, pulling out onto the highway, and then nothing but days of blacktop and nights of headlights.   She knew she had pulled off at rest stops and slept sometimes, but she did not remember consciously doing so.   Just as she could no longer remember the pain, the tearing pain….  She had screamed, but now she could not remember it.

Sarah's stoic face didn't even register as she pulled into her own driveway, turned off the ignition, and stumbled out of her car.  She fumbled the door open, locked it twice behind her, and made it to her bed before collapsing.  She buried her head in her arms, long silky hair trailing down her back and over her shoulders.  She pressed her face against the cool sheets—too hot for comforters or blankets—and wondered how long it would take for her body to warm the bed.  She almost passed out.  She did not cry.


	3. Leave Me Alone!

Jareth, King of the Goblins and ruler of the Underground, sat pensively in his throne staring into a crystal.  There was a plain wooden cradle on the floor at his feet, and in it lay the child he had so recently rescued.  

He sat the wrong way in the stone chair, turned sideways with one leg on the floor and the other thrown out over the armrest.  The crystal in his fingers shook slightly.   His face was disapproving, which wasn't unusual, but there was also a mask of pain there too, something so rarely seen on his kingly visage.  He looked dangerous, but also confused.  He stared deep into the depths of the perfect sphere, though nobody else could say what he was looking at.  

The room around him was cleaner than usual—possibly because there were no goblins rushing around.  He had banished them from the throne room the moment he strode in with the newborn infant in his arms.  Their carousing would disturb her, he was sure of it.  So the chickens were gone, the goblins were gone, and the place had magically cleaned itself with no more than a glance from the Goblin King.   It looked barren and gray, but Jareth wasn't paying attention and the infant slept soundly.  

"Sweet Sarah, what did you do?" he asked the crystal.  "Why?"  But the crystal did not answer, and the Goblin King sighed.  He stared into it for a little longer, but all he could see was her sleeping back with the silky waterfall of dark hair cascading down it.   

The infant mumbled in her sleep, then, and woke herself up with the noise.   She whimpered, and the sound seemed to draw Jareth up out of his stupor.  He shook his head, banished the crystal, and reached into the cradle to carefully pick up the child.

Her eyes were open now, and they were beautiful blue, framed by thick dark lashes that fanned to the side like any baby's eyelashes.   She was still terribly small, terribly fragile, and Jareth could hardly bear to hold her for fear he might hurt her.   But he couldn't seem to leave her in the cradle, couldn't put her down when every time she was left alone it seemed like another betrayal, another abandonment of her tiny form.  So the Goblin King who had held so many babies without a care and then turned them into little, ugly goblins, now cradled this human infant in his arms as if he might break her.  He settled her in the crook of his arm and with his other hand conjured a crystal.   Still too young to see clearly or truly control her movements, she ignored it.  Jareth spoke to her anyway as the picture again showed him Sarah sleeping on her cold sheets that would soon turn hot in the afternoon sunlight of southern California.  

"See?" he whispered to the tiny child, "That's your mother, unlikely as it seems."  His brow furrowed, and he absently kissed the silky hair on top of the child's head.   "I don't know what's happened, little one, but I'm going to sort it out.  I promise you that much."  He dissolved the crystal after another few seconds and turned his full attention to the newborn infant he held.  

"Did she really think you would be better off as a goblin?" he whispered, touching her fists, her tiny feet.  Her toes were perfectly curled, little miniatures of their adult form right down to the microscopic little nails.  "Did she think she could remove you from her life and just forget you?"    He shook his head and ran a finger down her tiny tummy.  "It's not that easy.   I am a man—an immortal one at that—and I know it is not that easy.  Childbirth is more than it seems."  He sighed, a gesture that took his whole body, and stared off into the distance for a long moment.  Sarah.   

"I'm going to have to pay an old friend of mine a visit," he said quietly, and smiled as the baby in his arms burbled.  "Would you like to come with me, eh?" 

*****

Sarah was asleep, sleeping the deep slumber of someone exhausted to the core, when the Goblin King appeared in her bedroom.  He was not holding the infant.  

"Sarah," he whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed and bending over her.   She did not awaken, did not acknowledge his presence in the least.  Jareth smiled slightly, but it was a smile full of self-mockery.   "Foolish man," he mumbled as he left the room.   

For the next half hour Jareth prowled Sarah's home like a tiger, scowling at little clues he found.  None added up to the full story.  He had stopped watching her a year after she left his Labyrinth, when it was apparent to him that she was never going to call him again.  That was just after her sixteenth birthday, when she put away the games and banished the children's books to the little hidden shelf in her closet.   That was the year makeup became real for her, the year a boy had first sought her hand to hold, her mouth to kiss.   She had allowed it, and Jareth hadn't looked closely enough to see that she felt nothing from the touch.   He stopped watching her when it hurt too much to continue.  

Now, a year and a half later, she was living on a foreign coast among people of a foreign language and she had wished her newborn daughter away from her.   Jareth had almost every power imaginable, but he couldn't see into the past and her mind was too distorted by drugs for him to pick out the details that he wanted.  He stared at his finds: a pile of fast food receipts from every state between California and her old home, vitamin supplements for pregnant women, a California drivers' license showing a tired, sunburned Sarah that he barely recognized.  

"Little one, what happened?" he whispered to the photo.   "What changed, sweet Sarah?"  The child he remembered might have wished her half-brother away in a fit of frustrated jealousy, but she would never have done the same to a daughter, a child fresh from the womb.  He ran his gloved hands through his hair in frustration.  Why had he left her alone?  This world was going to kill her one way or another if she stayed in it; he'd known that.  He just always assumed that she'd call him before it happened, that she had enough self-preservation instinct to ask to be taken away before it could get her completely.   

"Baby," he said, a term of endearment for the sleeping girl-mother, for the child she had once been.  The child that was no more.  

He was sitting on the edge of her bed when she woke, her eyes hazy with both pain and sleep.  "You," she said, wincing as she turned over, one hand clasped to her abdomen.   She didn't sound surprised to see him.   Maybe she was expecting him to argue over taking the infant.   Maybe she just didn't have the will anymore to care.

"Me." Jareth reached out and tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear.   "Do you want to talk?"

"No." She looked up at him warily.  "What do you want?  Why are you here?"   

Jareth chuckled, the cold mask returning a little.  "Sarah, Sarah.  You know that I always pay a visit when I am given a child."  

Her eyes closed, and she shook her head imperceptibly.   "I can't deal with you right now, Goblin King," she said.   "Go away."  

"No."   Jareth said firmly.   "Sarah, you can't just wish away your own baby, barely out of the womb, and leave it at that.   The world doesn't work that way, even for you."   

The threatened tears, the ones always hovering in her throat, were inching closer to the surface.  Too much more and she'd break….

"I don't want to hear it."  

"I know you don't, but you have to for your own good and for the good of that mortal infant I have yet to turn into a goblin."   Jareth crossed his arms over his chest.   "Would you like to look at your baby, Sarah?   _Have_ you seen your baby yet?   Do you even know if it's a boy or a girl?"  

His questions, accusing tone of voice, and cold eyes were too much.   Sarah buried her head back in the blanket and began to cry.  Pain pierced the Goblin King's heart because he knew he'd been the one to cause her suffering.  But he couldn't let it go; not just like that.  And where was the child's father, the other guilty party in this unfortunate circumstance?   Jareth wanted to rip his throat out, both for causing the pain he now saw in Sarah's eyes and for the fact that he, whoever he was, had coerced Sarah into giving into him when Jareth couldn't.  _She was only a child,_ one part of Jareth's mind admonished.  _She didn't know what it was you offered her._

_She is still a child_, Jareth argued back.  

"Sarah, beware," the Goblin King said, the icy indifference of his façade ignoring her tears.  "Everything I do concerning you is in your best interests.  I know you don't believe me, but it's true.  Fighting me hurts only you.  Can you not understand?"  Getting no response from the weeping girl, he decided to change tactics.   You cannot imagine the pain of knowing you sent your firstborn to me for eternity.  Sarah.  Such wounds never heal, child."

_That_ got a response.  "I am not a child!" she shrieked, sitting up and baring her teeth furiously like a cornered animal.  "What do you know of pain, of betrayal, of abandonment?  Damn you to your own Underground, Jareth!"

It was the first time she had ever spoken his name, and the Goblin King started, his mismatched eyes staring into hers.  Then, in the space of an eyeblink, she was in his arms and he was smoothing her hair, touching her shoulders, rocking her back and forth like a scared toddler.  "Sarah, sweet Sarah, what happened?" he asked.  The shock of sudden contact, of the first touch of skin upon skin had thrown Sarah for a loop and she had not shrugged off his body yet.   "What kind of world is this where children are having children and don't dare even look upon them?" he demanded.

She pulled away from him, then, and scrambled back on the bed, holding her aching abdomen and just barely managing to keep the tears back.   She was not ready for this emotional onslaught.  Her body was not healed, her heart felt as if it never would be, and all she wanted was to fall asleep…sleep so long and so deep that she wouldn't wake until the pain had been driven away by Time.  His arms were a dangerous place to be…so strong…choking her, smothering her in the smell of man.   "Leave me alone!"   Her voice was weak, panic rising to a frantic pitch.

"I'm sorry, Sarah."  His control was back, with only tiny licks of soul-deep sorrow bleeding through the exterior.   She could have seen them were she coherent enough to see through the panic.  "I promised that this world would never hurt you.  I promised it wouldn't get you.  I wasn't watching, though, and you never called me."   

"I didn't want you!" _Didn't want you to see me like this._   "For the last time, go away!"

"I can't do that, Sarah.  You called me by wishing away your baby and now I get to say my piece."

"No!" Sarah slapped her hands over her ears, but all that happened was Jareth's grip jerking her hands away and holding her wrists tightly as he bent down so she stared into his mismatched eyes. 

"No, Sarah, no more hiding.  You have to hear this, for your child's sake if not for your own.   You are a mother.  You have a beautiful daughter, a little girl.  She has ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes.   Her hair is dark silk, just like yours.   Her eyes are yours, too.   She looks just like you."   He had half-shouted the entire tirade, but now he quieted.  "Sarah.   Give it a month.   Come back to my castle, as my guest this time, and just relax while you heal.  Your daughter will be there." _And so will I._  The final words were unspoken, but hung in the air nonetheless like tinsel Christmas ornaments, like the sound of a single crystal shattering on outstretched fingers.  No hands were outstretched to catch it.

Sarah shook her head, her tears dampening streaks down her cheeks.   "I can't!  If I see…her…I won't be able to wish her away a second time!" 

"That's the point."  Jareth's tone was matter-of-fact, his mismatched eyes boring into her.   "Sarah, I have been generous up to this point."   He heard her mocking laugh and remembered his words as being redundant.  "I can just steal you away to my castle if need be.  I would prefer such measures not be necessary.   Come now.  Take my hand willingly and you get the deal—a month to heal.   Make me steal you away and you may never get the chance to return here."  His eyes disclosed the truth to his words by disclosing nothing.

Too exhausted to fight any more, Sarah reached out her trembling fingertips and brushed the outstretched hand of the Goblin King.   Her eyes did not meet his.  Her fingers fell away from his palm, but between one blink and the next Sarah found herself settled in a big four-poster bed in what she could only assume to be Jareth's castle.  The sheets were plain linen, nothing so exotic as silk or satin, but that set her more at ease than strange fabrics would have.

"Beautiful," she whispered as her head slowly turned to survey her surroundings.   The décor was done in warm peach and cream colors, saved from being over-feminine by the absence of lace or ruffle adornments.  And there, next to her arm, lay Lancelot the bear, her old friend from childhood.   At that point she didn't much care if the toy was a quality fake or if Jareth had stolen it from her sleeping toddler brother.   She hugged the little bear to her chest and sighed, breathing in his tattered smell.  Comforted, she closed her eyes.  The pain in her abdomen had ceased, but she didn't have time to wonder about that.  Within seconds she was asleep in the big bed.


	4. Reconciliation

"Silly child," Jareth said fondly when he entered the room to check on her several hours later.   He smiled, but the gesture was filled with sadness.   He gazed down at her sleeping form, and the questions he had not asked her before now rose to his lips.   "I loved you with everything I had," he whispered to her.   "Sarah, you could have been a queen if you so chose, and I thought you _would_ choose.   Your world is this world, not Aboveground.   Why couldn't you see that?"   

_She was too young,_ the soft voice inside his head said.   Jareth pretended to ignore it.   

"Sweet Sarah," he whispered.   "Who was he?   Did you see yourself in his eyes?   What was it about him that pierced that shell you built around yourself?   What made you trust this mortal when all the others you cast away?"   He reached down and pulled a strand of hair away from her face, the one contact he allowed himself.   "Sarah.  Where is he now?" 

The sleeping girl didn't answer the questions, and the king of the goblins watched her for a long moment.   "You called me once when your heart yearned for adventure and your father's new son was filling your vision with jealousy.   You called me a second time when your heart yearned to stop working, to allow you to sleep.   To sleep.   I can't let you do that; can't let you silence your heart.   I can't live within you, and your daughter can't live without you."   

He left but returned within moments, this time bearing in his arms the tiny baby, the infant Sarah had tried to give up.   He stared down at her, how she slept with an arm curled protectively around the stuffed bear he had swiped from Toby to give her.   Smiling with a hint of his old wickedness, he pulled the toy out of her sleeping arms and replaced it with the nameless little girl.   Sarah, too deep in sleep to notice the difference, adjusted her arm around the child and sighed softly.   Jareth set the bear against the footboard of the bed and pulled up a chair, prepared to watch as Sarah slept.   The three humanoids and one little stuffed bear continued through the morning like that, two sleeping, two watching, until the soft humming chimes of the castle's clocks began striking noon.   

*****

The sound woke Sarah, though it did not seem to disturb the baby nestled in her arms.   She nuzzled the pillow, blinked several times, and only then did she realize that she no longer held a stuffed toy.   She stared down at the sleeping infant for several seconds, seconds that stretched into the far side of tomorrow with their apparent length.   Her eyes took on a glazed look.   She wet her lips, took a shaky breath, and though her eyes did not travel away from the baby her words were for Jareth's ears.   

"Dear God, what have you done?"

He didn't answer, and for a long time nobody moved.   Jareth held his breath, waiting to see what Sarah's reaction would be.   He didn't think she could stare at that sleeping baby and push it away again, deny her gut instinct to nurture the little girl.   But he had pushed her perilously close to breakdown many times this day…perhaps too many times.   He winced inwardly, but knew it had to be done.   For the sake of the two mortal hearts, it had to be done.   

It was the nameless infant herself who finally broke the impasse.   She moved in her sleep, one tiny fist moving up to rub her eye, her little knees bending and her feet kicking at the air.   Sarah moved one hand as if in a dream, touched two fingertips to one tiny, socked foot, and in that one motion Jareth saw that there was nothing more to fear in regard to the child's abandonment.   

"Damn you, Jareth."   

The words were quiet, but the meaning behind them quite clear.   Jareth sighed, not really sure how she'd known he was in the room, and rose.   He strode over to the bed and touched her hair again, cradling his hand over the crown of her silky, dark head.   "Sarah, it had to be done.   You cannot simply abandon her.   This isn't a game anymore."   

She looked up at him, killing pain in her eyes.   "It wasn't a game to begin with!   I didn't want this!"

He knelt next to the bed so they were eye-to-eye, and he forced his face into the icy mask.   The dangerous Goblin King.   The way Sarah liked it; the way she expected him to be.   "Sarah, you cannot sit there and tell me you didn't know the consequences of your actions."   

She closed her eyes and shook her head, but it was more in refusal of his words than refusal of their meaning.   

Jareth let her retreat into herself for several seconds before he again forced her out of her shell.   "Who was he?"   

Eyes squeezed tight, Sarah visibly fought back a sob.   She shook her head again, violently.   

"Why won't you tell me?" Jareth continued to question.   "Afraid?   I am no more here to set your Aboveground societal standards on you than I am to steal away that child."   

Her eyes flashed open again, hot amber uncooled by the characteristic green.   "Why not?   Why wouldn't you take this child, why couldn't you have just left it at that?   Why don't you want her?"

"No." Jareth shook his head, ice-cold eyes staring into hers.   "No, the question is not why I did not want her.   The question is why _you_, her mother, wouldn't want her.   Why not, Sarah?   What pain has this innocent child caused you?"   

She tried to shake her head again, but Jareth caught her cheeks in his hands and he forced her to continue to look at him.   "No more hiding, Sarah.   The truth this time.   What will it cost you to admit to me the truth?"

"My sanity," she whispered, deadly serious.   

They sat that way for a long moment, until one of Sarah's tears found its way to the Goblin King's hand still holding her face.   He blinked and pulled his hand away from her skin, but his eyes didn't move from hers.   When his touch receded, Sarah took a big breath and began to speak.   

"I've told nobody, Goblin King.   Not my father, not my stepmother, not the counselor at school who tried to make me talk.   They think what they like.   Even if I told the truth they would not believe it.   So why risk what little good sense I have left in drudging up the past?"

Jareth reached toward her again and she tensed.   He ignored it, placing his hand very gently on her shoulder.   She shook it off, in her eyes a warning that spoke volumes more than she meant it to.   Jareth decided to speak anyway.   "You have to face it sometime, child.   Maybe not today—I will not force you to speak of it today.   But the past will always haunt you until you face the wounds and let them heal.   They can't do it on their own."   

Sarah pulled her gaze away from his and dropped it to the floor.   "Leave me alone."   

The king of the goblins stood, then, weary of constantly changing his persona to fit her flighty needs.   But he touched her hair one last time, nodded once, and stepped away from the bed.   "I'll leave you and the child for now, then.   But Sarah, you _will_ talk to me sometime, when you are better rested and healed.   I know you don't think so right now, but I am not your enemy.   I never really was; you just wanted to believe so."   

"I don't know what to believe," she admitted quietly.   "I need time.   Time to think, time to heal."   

Jareth smiled.   "Then time you shall have.   But hear me—take care of the child.   I will send servants to assist you, if you so desire, but she is yours.   No matter what pain lies in her begetting, she is innocent of that and she deserves a mother.   You."   

With that he disappeared completely.   There was no puff of smoke, no mask of glitter—he simply was not there between one blink and the next.   Sarah sighed, shook her head, and lay back down.   She ran trembling fingers over the infant's body, touched her soft skin and tightly clenched fists.   Sarah leaned down and experimentally placed a gentle kiss on the infant's forehead.   Warm skin, the smell of powder and milk.   So tiny…

"You're really not so scary," Sarah whispered.   "How could something as small as you be frightening?"   Then she shook her head again.   "We're in such a mess, little one.   You wouldn't believe it."

*****

True to his word, Jareth sent a human servant in to check on Sarah less than an hour after he left her.   She pushed the door open and bustled over to the bed in such a no-nonsense way that Sarah didn't quite know what had hit her.   

"Who—who are you?" she stuttered as she felt her arm grasped and her body half-lifted from the bed as the woman urged her up.   

"Hello, m'lady.   It's far too late in the day to still be a-bed.   Now, we'll just plop you in a bath, let you soak a bit, and get you settled somewhere more fitting to lounge."   She smiled, but it was obvious that she was doing her job as she herded Sarah into the adjoining bathroom and turned on the bathtub faucets.   The bubbles that foamed up with the clear water smelled of violets.   

Sarah took a moment to study her assailant as they waited for the tub to fill.   The woman was tall and, while not round, was definitely heavy-set.   She moved with the practiced grace of one who knows exactly what she is about.   It was not like Jareth's cat-like, dancing, dangerous grace.   He had the elegance of quicksilver, of moonlight, of birds and felines.   This woman was more like a workhorse or a dog, something big and ungainly that knew its job and did it well.   She had light hair, somewhere between blond and brown, and it lay in dull lines around her shoulders.   She wore a white cap, a wine-colored dress, and sturdy shoes.   The ease with which she managed Sarah made the new mother wonder if this woman had children of her own.   

Before she knew what had happened, Sarah found herself in the bathtub, and the woman was in the process of shoving Sarah's jeans down the laundry chute with ill-disguised distaste.   Sarah didn't much like them herself—they'd been maternity wear that she'd trimmed down for after the baby was born, for the few weeks before she'd be able to wear regular clothes again.   

Just as Sarah was about to ask the woman her name, she heard a faint cry from the adjoining bedroom.   The maid swooped in like someone on a mission and returned with the newborn infant clasped in her arms.   "Now then," she said, handing the child to Sarah, "she's hungry.   And rightly so; her last meal was a while ago.   Had to feed her on bottles.   But now that you're here, we can dispense with that silliness."   

Jealousy, indignance, and a sense of panic welled up in Sarah at about the same time.   Jealousy that this woman had been caring for _her_ child—and where had _that_ come from, Sarah wondered?   Indignance that she was referred to as a provider of nourishment like some old cow, and panic that this strange woman expected her to breast-feed this child, the child she hadn't wanted to have and was now stuck with.   

"But—" Sarah started.   The crying had not ceased, and Sarah felt the beginnings of a headache.   

"Shy, I see," the woman said.  "Well, I'll be off then, for a bit.   Let you take it from here.   I'll be back before you're out of the bath, though, or we'll both catch it from His Majesty!"   And she left Sarah there, crying infant in her arms, staring after her as if her guardian angel had just flown away the moment she rode into battle.   

"Hush, little one," Sarah crooned, not knowing what else to do.   Her milk had begun to flow at the child's cries, and not knowing what else to do, she gingerly set the baby at her breast.   The infant did all the rest as instinct took over.   Sarah held her gently, carefully above the hot water, and relaxed into the back of the bathtub.   She closed her eyes and sighed, resting the child against her stomach.   _Damn Jareth,_ was her general line of thinking.   She could bet the Goblin King would know exactly how unbalanced his choice of hired help would make Sarah feel, and she'd also bed that was exactly the reason why he had done it.   Damn him, anyway.   

Sarah opened her eyes and turned her attention to the baby nursing quietly at her breast.   She raised one wet hand out of the water and touched the child's soft cheek.   "Little one," she whispered, "oh, little baby, what am I to do with you?"   She smiled experimentally, and the gesture felt good.   "I suppose I'll have to name you, eventually."   The infant flicked her sweet blue eyes up at her mother for a moment before returning her concentration to suckling.   Sarah laughed softly, a tiny sound, but she realized how long it had been since she last laughed.   

_Sarah…_   The sound seemed to float around her tangibly, brush like silk against her shoulders, her ear.   _Sarah…_   It was Jareth's voice.   

Before she had time to decipher what that might mean, the frightening woman was back.   She took the child away to burp, and Sarah used the opportunity to duck under the water and clean up.   Her entire world smelled of violets, and she loved it.   

She sank again under the surface of the warm water, bubbles closing around her.   It would be so easy just to slip away like this, with the scent of violets surrounding her.   But no, she couldn't do that.   She had—and here was that nasty word again—responsibilities.   What would happen to the babe with no mother around?   What indeed?

Sarah pulled herself to the surface, and there was her helper, just waiting for her.   Without a word Sarah was bundled into a towel, then a loose dress that hung softly to her knees, and she was settled on a comfortable couch on the room's balcony.   From here, it seemed she could see forever.   The beautiful sandstone Labyrinth stretched out for miles any way she looked.   She smiled, accepted the cup of hot herbal tea pressed into her hand, and reached for the child settled in a small cradle next to her feet.   For now she wouldn't worry about the future and what would happen when she had to go back Aboveground.   For now, she would rely on the Goblin King's dubious hospitality and learn to love the tiny infant she had birthed a day ago.   Later would come the probing questions, the demands to know who and how and when and why.   Now was time to rest.   To heal.


	5. Questions

Jareth lounged indolently on his throne, a crystal ball held in his long-fingered hands.  To the casual observer, he was merely a sovereign enjoying some quiet moments alone with his thoughts and a pretty bauble.  The goblins, silly creatures though they were, knew better.  

Staring deep into the crystal's pale face, the King of the Goblins was conjuring.   He paid no attention to the silent throne room around him, the small piles of dirt and trash that the goblins had left from their last party.  He was watching someone in the crystal.  For once, however, it wasn't Sarah.

_"I wish you'd stop moping around the house!  It's beginning to be insufferable."_

__

The man shrugged, picked up the newspaper.  His wife continued to scold.  "Honestly!  It's like having a teenager back in the house again!"  

__

The paper was forcefully slammed down onto the coffee table, and the man looked up at his wife.  "Enough!"   Karen knew she had gone too far with that last comment, but she didn't care.  She was tired of seeing her husband moping around the house because his daughter had gotten into trouble and then run away.

__

"No, it's not enough.  It's time I said my piece."

__

"When have you ever not?" he said, but it was a rhetorical question and he didn't even expect an answer.  He folded his arms and sat motionless on the divan, resigned to listen to her speech.   

__

"I was more than patient with that girl," Karen began.   "Always living in a fantasy world—that's what got her into trouble, you know.  Never knowing truth from fantasy.  That's why she lied to us.  Why she told us she wasn't interested in dating, wasn't seeing any boys."  

__

"Karen—" 

__

She ignored him.  "What sixteen year old girl goes out to the park to play?  She was probably meeting her boyfriend there the whole time!   This could have been going on for years!"  

__

"Karen!   She was just a child!   She would take her mother's costumes, the ones left, and play dress-up and make-believe in the park.   I've watched her do it time and time again.  I know you've never really understood Sarah, but she wasn't lying about that."   

__

"If all she was doing was playing in the park, then how did she end up pregnant at seventeen?" Karen demanded.  Her husband refused to answer.  He knew enough to recognize a baited question when he heard one.  

__

"Karen, what she did was inexcusable.  I realize that.  But it doesn't stop the fact that I miss my daughter."

__

"She left willingly."

__

"She knew there would be no peace in this house while both of you were living in it!"

__

Soft footsteps were heard on the stairs, and suddenly Toby's five-year-old face peeked through the banister railings.  "Mama?  You fightin' again?" he asked.  "When's Sarah coming home?"

__

"Sarah is not coming back," Karen snapped.  "Ever.  This is no longer her home, Tobias."  

__

Toby shrank back and slouched up the stairs again.  Everything in his demeanor shouted that he knew better than to argue when his mother took that tone of voice.  

__

Sarah's father stood, then, and turned to his wife. "I will not have angry words thrown about this house any longer," he said, sounding both angry and tired.   "No one will speak of Sarah again.   Do you hear me?   Never again.  She's gone—and it's probably better this way.  Let's get on with our lives.  Enough is enough."

Jareth quite agreed.  He banished the image from the crystal and dropped the perfect sphere from his gloved hand.   It smashed into the stone floor and scattered into a million tiny shards of glass.  

For a moment the goblin king merely slouched in his throne and tapped his leg with the riding crop he held in his hand.  "Something's not right," he mumbled to himself, one hand covering his mouth in a thoughtful pose.  He scowled.  "Something doesn't fit here, and I'd bet anything that Sarah knows what it is.   She's no fool.  Rash and headstrong, stubborn as a mule, childish…but not a fool."   He stood up and began to pace, a bad habit but one he engaged in when things weren't going the way he liked.   "No, something does not fit here at all."  He slapped the arm of his throne with the riding crop in frustration and wished he had a couple of goblins to kick around.  There were none to be found at the moment.

"Damn."

There was only one thing he could think of, only one thing that might solve the mystery, and he devoutly didn't want to do that yet.   Talk to Sarah.  She turned his entire world upside down with her furious arguments and her tears.   He wanted so desperately to help her…but he knew there would be little appreciation for his help.   He was trying to give her haven—she thought herself a prisoner.  He had offered his heart—and she had borne the child of a mortal man.  Why and how, Jareth did not know.  He cursed again and whirled around, determined to at least work up a suitable level of irritation before confronting her again.   It helped keep his head level in the long run.  

Turning to pace back toward the windows, Jareth called another crystal to his grasp.  Looking into it, he beheld a vision of Sarah sitting on a couch, wrapped in a blanket as protection against the wind.  She was holding the troublesome little baby in her arms, but paying only fitful attention to it.  He was about to banish the vision when she took a breath and spoke.

"What am I doing here?" she asked, the question directed to nobody in particular.  She sighed and rocked the child a little bit.  "Ever since returning to my home three years ago, I wanted nothing more than to be back here.  Now I am, and it scares me as much as it did when I was racing to get Toby back."   She stared down at the little girl.   "Damn Jareth, too.  I wanted my brother back and I had to struggle to get him.   I didn't want you back, and he hands you to me as if I had merely misplaced you and he was returning you.   Like a good Samaritan and a lost wallet."  She grimaced.   "As if I could call Jareth _good_."   

The baby burbled, a soft noise, and her little arm jerked as she tried to move it.  Sarah smiled, and that smile warmed the ice around Jareth's heart.  "I don't hate him, little one.  Ever since the first time I saw him, so tall, so fierce, so frightening, I couldn't stop thinking about him.  He stole my brother and nearly killed me when I tried to get him back.   But…" Here she stopped, and Jareth nearly stomped his foot in frustration before curbing the desire to do something so childish.   "What am I saying?" she demanded of herself.  "As he says, I am a…mother…now.  You are mine.   That means I can't be thinking about what I wish could have been.  It can never be any more."  

Jareth sank into his throne, not sure if he was hearing correctly.   Yet that was Sarah, and she was undeniably in his castle, under his care, sitting wrapped in a blanket on one of his balconies.  Her final words confused him again, momentarily taking away the shock of what she had almost confessed.   

"Oh, little one," she said to the tiny baby girl, "I wish I had borne you out of love.  There would be something to be said about that, at least."


	6. Face-to-Face

Jareth left her alone for two days, two days in which she spent her time learning how to care for the little baby she had borne.   The child still had no name.   Sarah wasn't ready to give her a name, and with that name, personality.   She knew she loved the infant, and she knew she could not give her up again, but she was still far from a doting mother.   

Jareth had placed a small library of books at her disposal, which Sarah had discovered on the afternoon of her first day in the castle beyond the goblin city.   She spent hours in there, and hours on the balcony overlooking the Labyrinth.   Often she slept.   Sometimes she stared off into space, her mind registering nothing.   It was at these times that her mind did what her body used sleep to do—heal.   She was healing bodily and mentally.   Her heart still ached, and there was nothing she knew that could fix that.

Just because the Goblin King was not with her didn't mean he wasn't watching her.   Indeed, he had a crystal trained on her all hours of the day.   Engaged in his duties—whether amusing himself by kicking the goblins about or actually doing work—the crystal was always nearby.   A simple glance from time to time confirmed all his doubts and all his assurances about Sarah Williams.   He wasn't stupid.   She was healing…but not completely.   There were things there that would never heal the way she was going.   Jareth sighed.   He was going to have to do this the hard way.

But was it really the hard way?   The Goblin King considered.   He had loved Sarah since she was old enough to attract his attention.   She had been eight or nine years old.   That was the year she'd received a present from her mother, the battered copy of a play entitled _Labyrinth._   The script bore little resemblance to his actual domain, and the king in the story was certainly not Jareth.   But still…still there was something in the way she recited the words and the way she avidly sucked herself into the story that had drawn his attention.   There was magic in her childish acting.   

Children fascinated the Goblin King, but this one little girl stuck with him as she grew.   She didn't put away the games and toys as most girls did when they entered junior high school.   Through the years, her love of fantasy and make-believe had only grown stronger as her friends began to disappear into the world of dating and makeup.   And the Goblin King had continued to watch her, enthralled.   

He refused to admit, for the longest time, that he was actually in love with the child.   But the minute one of his airhead goblins gave her the words, the words to send her half-brother into the arms of the Goblin King, Jareth had no choice but to play the game.   He changed it to somewhat mirror her book, though he refused to tell himself the changes were for her benefit.   He played along—a game for a half-grown child not ready yet for promises of the heart.   He would have scoffed at the offer of her little brother if he could have, but once said, the words could not be taken back.   She had to enter the Labyrinth, and he had to try and defeat her.   

The first crystal he offered her, in the dark cave of her parents' bedroom, had been false.   He knew she would not accept it, knew she hadn't meant to send the screaming baby away.   But the second time, when they faced off amid the ruins of the Escher room, that had been real.   The crystal he extended had been his heart.   She refused it.   

_She didn't understand what it was you offered her,_ the voice inside his head screamed.   And at long last, Jareth freely admitted the truth.   At fifteen years old, a child still in the ways of the world, Sarah had not understood what it was he wanted of her.   She couldn't see him as anything but the story's villain.   _Every good story has a villain…_   So what else was there to be?   Beautiful heroines don't battle Prince Charming.   

After closing his world to her when she turned sixteen, Jareth had been moody and uncooperative…even more than usual.   So it was with some shock that he considered the fact that she might have been wanting something very similar to what he'd been wanting these long years since he'd last beheld her.   He nearly couldn't believe it, but her candid words to the sleeping infant had not had any air of falsity about them.   She was serious.   She….

A plan began forming in Jareth's devious mind.   He was nothing if not devious.   A perfect king for the goblins.   Sarah refused to allow her heart to heal.   She wouldn't—perhaps couldn't—do it on her own.   So Jareth would help things along a bit…and satisfy his own raging curiosity and desire at the same time.

"I'll have you yet, Sarah," he whispered.   "Child or no child, your heart doesn't belong up there.   I know that now; your own words have betrayed you.   Now if I can only make you see it."   Jareth smiled.   The games had begun, this time with a much bigger prize than a screaming half-brother.  Sarah's own heart.

*****

"Come now, Sarah," he said as he appeared in front of her.   She tensed, her arms immediately coming up to press the child to her shoulder as if to shield the infant from his leering face.

"Oh hush," Jareth said.   "I gave her back to you; why should I steal her away again?"

Sarah's soft blue eyes held less trust than a rabbit encountering a wolf.   "Why did you give her back to me?"

"Because you didn't mean what you said."

"I didn't mean it with Toby either."   

Jareth shrugged.   "That was different. You had to be shown that you didn't really mean it, both times.   With Toby, taking him proved that you really did care enough for him to fight to get him back.   With this little one, returning her proved that you really do love her."   He sighed and extended a hand to her, palm up.   She stared up at him warily and did not move.   

"Sarah, what will it take for you to trust me?" he asked simply.   "I gave her back. I also told you that you would come to no harm while under my protection.   That includes from me. Now, please.   Trust me."

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Still the skeptic?" Jareth sighed and shook his head.   "I told you that your time here was to heal.   But you can't do it by just sitting here and watching life go by without you."   He bent down and plucked the child easily from her grasp.   Before she could argue, he had summoned the nursemaid and had her take the baby away.   

"What—" Sarah argued, but Jareth hushed her. 

"You are a person too, are you not?" he demanded.   "Come with me, then. There are parts of the Labyrinth you've never seen.   Three years ago you barely scratched the surface of all I own.   Let me show you."   

Sarah cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at where the large hulk of the nursemaid was cooing to the baby.   

"She'll be returned to you.   Consider it babysitting." Jareth chuckled and held out his long-fingered hand once more. "Come."

Not seeing much choice, Sarah took it.

*****

"I wish you'd somehow figure out that you can trust me," the Goblin King said conversationally as they strolled through the winding sandstone of the Labyrinth.

"I trust you about as far as I can throw you, Goblin King," Sarah replied.   She kicked at the stone beneath her feet and refused to look up at him.   She remembered this place, the stone maze she had spent so many hours in.   She didn't know how Jareth could tell one part of his kingdom from the others, but she assumed he could.   He didn't say anything about getting lost in his own Labyrinth.

When the king of the goblins said nothing, Sarah looked up to see his expression.   He was no longer beside her.              

Heart sinking, head shrieking at her for walking into yet another trap, Sarah spun around in a full circle.   Nothing.   

"Jareth?" she called hesitantly.   Then, with rising anger and panic, "Jareth!"

A familiar, dry chuckle sounded from directly behind her, and Sarah whirled to face him with anger written on her face.   "Jareth—"

"What's the matter?" he asked craftily.   "Don't trust me, do you?   You didn't expect me to disappear on you.   Isn't that trust?"

Sarah stared at him, avoiding an answer.   Jareth merely smiled and reached forward, taking her hand in his gloved one.   He held it up, her fingers limply curved around the back of his.   "You trust me more than you know, Sarah.   Once you figure it out, the question won't seem so strange to you."   

"I don't understand you," Sarah said, thinking it as safe an answer to that as any.   "How can I trust someone I don't understand?"

"Sweet Sarah, have you a need to understand everything?" Jareth countered.   He began walking again, but did not release her hand.   Sarah didn't think to pull away.   The dialogue turned more to actual conversation than arguing.   "You don't always understand your parents, I daresay.   Yet you trust them, do you not?"

"No," Sarah said flatly.   Her tone was carefully schooled, the perfect actress.   But Jareth saw past it in a heartbeat.   His Sarah, the real Sarah, didn't talk woodenly about anything.   She cared too much.

"Why not?" he asked, striving to keep a casual note in his voice.   Slowly, he was attempting to lead her into uncomfortable territory, into the realm of past history where she devoutly did not want to go.   If he kept it casual, however, he might lure her into giving away information….

No such luck.

"Leave me alone, Goblin King.   I will not be baited.   My stories are my own to keep, and the child my own cross to bear since you will not free me from it." 

"Secrets are more of a burden than a child."

"But I choose to keep them.   They are mine to keep."

Jareth inclined his head at that, though unwillingly, and for a moment they walked in silence.   Then Sarah pulled her hand away from his, took a deep breath, and spoke again.   "Since you're being so inquisitive today, can I reciprocate?"   She looked up at him.   "I don't understand you.   I know nothing about you."

Jareth smiled.   "Few do."   

"Why is that?"

He shrugged and pulled a crystal out of the air.   "Probably for the same reason you do not wish to answer my questions.   Secrecy.   Secrecy is power, Sarah.   People fear what they do not understand."

"Not always."   She stopped walking, and Jareth felt her eyes upon him.   He stopped too, and slowly turned to her.   Sarah swallowed, as if unsure, and took a long moment to gather her thoughts before continuing to speak.   "I don't fear you anymore, Jareth, even though I know nothing about you.   What little I _do_ know tells me that…." Here she paused.   "I don't know!" she spat, running a hand frustratedly through her dark hair.   "I've had years to think about that night you took Toby, and I've realized many things about those hours I spent here, in your Labyrinth.   I don't think you were being generous at all, but I don't see you as the villain.   You did what I asked, though you twisted everything around to fit your idea of what I wished.   You were cruel, but not…unkind.   Does that make any sense at all?"

"Strangely, yes," Jareth said quietly.   

"What I've learned tells me that you won't harm me while I am here.   Not really.   But you also act on whims, harsh ones.   I wouldn't put it past you to leave me here, just for your amusement."   She shrugged.   "Cruel, but not unkind.   You wouldn't place me in any real danger, but you would make me fear it."   

Jareth smiled.   "You have learned much, I see, in the time between our meetings."   

Sarah shrugged.   "Maybe."   

There was silence as they walked.   A series of short, shallow steps gave Jareth the opportunity to gently place a hand on her arm just below the elbow on the pretense of helping her down.   Then, Jareth's voice again.   "You've been thinking of the Labyrinth, then?"

Sarah nodded, but a crease formed between her eyebrows.   "I tried not to.   It should have been a horrible task, something I remembered with distaste, but I don't.   I treasure my memories of my time here, the friends I made…" _You_.   The word hung in the air, unsaid.   It didn't need to be.   

"But you put away the games, the stories.   You stopped acting the fairy tales."   

Sarah didn't question how he knew this.   "But I never stopped believing in them."   She looked at him again, a small smile on her face.   "How could I, when I had met one face-to-face?"

The words gave Jareth a wedge with which to unbalance her again.   He smirked.   "Not quite face-to-face yet," he said, and before she could anticipate his actions, he leaned down and swiftly placed a gentle, fleeting kiss to her lips.   She stopped, frozen with shock, suddenly remembering with vivid clarity the one moment back at her California house where he had held her in his arms.   She stared up at him.   "_Now_ you have," Jareth said, sounding very pleased with himself.   He chuckled at her expression, captured her hand once again, and continued walking.


	7. Flashback

John Williams stared morosely out the window.   It was raining again.   He remembered so well how Sarah used to enjoy the rain.   Sometimes, as a child, she would come home splattered with mud merely because she hadn't the sense to leave the park when the sky opened up and sheets of water fell.   She caught cold often when young, but she was strong and wiry, a little tomboy who loved playing make-believe games with the neighborhood children.   Before her growth spurt had started turning her into a woman, she had always wanted to play male characters.   She didn't want to be the rescued heroine.   She wanted to do the rescuing.   

That had all changed when Sarah turned twelve, received her first bra, and her mother left the house.   John knew he was partly to blame.   With no one running the household he had imposed upon Sarah the feminine role, having her take over what previously her mother had grudgingly done.   Except with his daughter, John Williams allowed no griping.   Cooking, cleaning, simple housework were now part of her daily life along with schoolwork.   There was less time for games of bravery, of heroic spirit.   That was when she stopped playing Robin Hood and began to be Maid Marian.

He hadn't minded.   One didn't present a little tomboy with dusty knees at office parties.   The men at the office had all fathered little ladies, and John was determined to be like them now that he had lost his trump card—his theatre wife.   Men had always watched Linda Williams wherever she went.   John thought they were good for each other—his stability to her rashness and head for excitement.   He thought he could ground her a little, and when that didn't work he thought maybe having a child could give her more of a sense of responsibility.   All it did was throw their lives into even more chaos.   Sarah grew up halfway motherless, for Linda was often in the City doing what she loved best—acting.   

John Williams stared at the family portrait, a large 11x13 hanging on the wall.   Sarah wasn't in it; it had been taken just several months before.   Toby was growing, he had to admit.   The boy wasn't a baby anymore.   John worried.   Where had he gone wrong with Sarah?   What had happened?   Would the same thing happen with Toby, too?

Boys had never been a part of Sarah's life.   That was one thing that had saved her from being found out before she told them.  Didn't even tell them, really.   The memories were too painful to think about.   John poured himself a shot of the kirschwasser that Karen so frowned upon, propped it on his soft stomach, and settled into the leather armchair staring morosely out at the rain.   His mind rolled back months, as in a form of mental masochism he remembered what had happened on the day Karen came to him with her suspicions….

_"John, listen to me!"_

_"Karen, I know the two of you don't get along, but that's no reason for you to come complaining to me.   What happened this time? Another fight?"_

_"John, I think she's pregnant."   _

_He laughed and shook his head.   "Are you crazy?   Sarah?   She doesn't even date!"   _

_She narrowed her eyes, unwilling to let this go.   "So she says.   John.   For the past few months she's spent all her time up in her room.   She refuses to go anywhere, even to the park or the library.   She comes down to meals with swollen eyes when she comes at all—she's up there crying.   Half the time she's so sick in the mornings that she can't go to school, but she feels fine by lunch.   You go away to the office every day.   You don't see everything that I do.   I know you don't want to believe it, but look at her!   She's always so secretive.   She's hiding something, John, and if it's not a baby then I'll…I'll…I'll wish Toby away to those stupid goblins she's always telling him about!"_

_"Karen," John warned, sober now, "You're making an extremely serious accusation.   Are you sure?"_

_"No," she admitted.   "But nearly so.   Please, just talk to her.   She won't say anything to me; she still treats me like she's Cinderella and I'm some sort of ogre."_

_John Williams rubbed the bridge of his nose.   This was _not_ what he wanted to be dealing with after a long day at the office.   "All right," he said finally.   "We'll both go talk to her.   You do know that if you're wrong this will ruin any form of relationship you two might have built."_

_"I know," Karen said grimly.   "I'm that sure."_

_Sarah was lying on her bed when her father knocked on the door and then opened it without waiting for permission.   He stared at her, unwilling to believe what his wife was saying but knowing all the same that it was true.   Even just looking at her, at Sarah's adolescent body, he could tell.   _

_"My God," he whispered.   Her eyes, bright with tears and red from crying, stared at him as she turned her head.   "It's true."   He narrowed his eyes at his daughter.   "Karen?"_

_There was no swell to her stomach yet, but even so John could tell that there was a child living inside his daughter's body.   He barely felt his wife's hand on his arm as he stared at her, stared at the girl who looked so much like her mother.   Jumbled thoughts floated through his head.   When was the last time he had hugged her?   When was the last time he had really looked at her and _seen_ her?   When had he last spoken to her and actually cared about her answer?   Feelings of powerless inadequacy shot through him, as he saw what all fathers feared and saw as their failure.   Whether it was testosterone or merely the bonds of society that prompted the feeling, anger swept through him almost as quickly as the sense of his shortfall.   It was anger directed at the girl lying on her bed, her childhood bed still covered in stuffed animals.   _

_"Who is he?" John demanded, stepping forcefully into the room.   Karen was beside him, but offered no help to either Sarah or her father.   _

_"Daddy…" Sarah said, slowly sitting up.   Her arm snaked around her midsection, an involuntary protective gesture that enraged her father even more._

_"Yes, that's what I'm asking!" he bellowed, his face growing red.   "Who put that bastard in your belly?!"_

_"John," Karen said quietly, a rebuke at his language._

_"Who is he?!!!"_

_Sarah's jaw tightened in resolve, no longer looking to him for quarter.   She stared defiantly at her father and stepmother, not saying a word.   _

_"God help me, girl, you will not make a mockery of me!" he said. "I raised you better than this!"_

_"You raised nothing!" Sarah screamed back.   "You were always too busy at the office, attending parties hosted by your betters, hoping you'd get ahead!   You took no notice of me when Mom was around, because she was beautiful and charming and the perfect pawn to hoist you up!   You didn't even look at me until she left, and then it was only to tell me to fix you dinner!"   Her face was growing red, too, and the threatened tears began to spill over. "I can't help it if you wanted a son!   I can't help it if I couldn't be what you wanted!"_

_"So now you'll whore yourself and blame me for it?" he demanded.   "Don't you dare try and lay all this at my feet!"_

_"You'd just step on it if I did," Sarah mumbled, flopping back to the bed.   She lay on her stomach, burying her head in the pillows and trying to drown out the voice screaming in her heart, the one that had always believed her father would be supportive when the time came to confess….   Now it was dying slowly, that voice._

_Sharp footsteps sounded, and a strong hand on Sarah's arm wrenched her to a sitting position again.   She stared up into her father's furious face, alarmed.   She shrank back from the hand touching her, knowing her previous bruises had healed but still feeling the shame of their past presence.   Up until this moment, she had never felt fear around her father.   Other men, yes, but not her _father….__

_"Let go of me!" she demanded._

_He didn't.   "Look at me, damn it!" he said, staring hard into her blue eyes with his dark ones.   "Don't you dare try and tell me it is my fault!   Now, I will ask you one more time.   Who…is…he?"   The words were slow and deliberate, the pauses between them laced with undisguised anger._

_"No king's command could make me tell," she spat.   "Think what you will of me, for I have done with you."   She pulled her arm away from his grip, spreading the bruise she knew it would leave.   _

_"No," he said.   "I have done with _you._"   And with that he stormed away._

_Two days later—two days where Sarah locked her door and refused to come out—she was gone.   Her Jeep wasn't in the driveway, her bank account had been withdrawn, and there was no clue as to where she had went.   She left no note._

Now, John Williams sat in his armchair and stared out at the rain, cursing his temper a thousand times over.   First he had lost Linda, and then Sarah.   It wasn't fair.   He winced as he recognized one of Sarah's favorite statements.   Come to think of it, she hadn't said that in…years, it had been.   

"Sarah," he whispered.   It was terrible, not knowing where she had gone, what direction she had taken, if she ever reached her destination.   She had not gone to find Linda—that much was sure.   "Sarah, I'm so sorry," he whispered to the rain.   It was all he would let himself say.   She was gone, most likely forever.   If she ever chose to come back, he didn't know what he'd say.   He could tell the rain he was sorry, but apologizing in person was another matter. 

For a long time he sat and stared out at the rain.   Little did he know an unseen presence sat behind him in another overstuffed chair.   Invisible, Jareth watched Sarah's father.   He scowled.  "Foolish man.   You lost the greatest treasure under heaven, and you are just now starting to figure it out."   He clucked his tongue and faded away.   "Such a pity…"


	8. Tell Me

_Hello! I just realized I haven't said anything to anyone who has reviewed any of my stories. Sorry! Well, I was trying to get on with the plot here, so forgive the fact that they're sort of plunging in unrealistically. I blame it on the Pirate Movie (If you haven't seen it, don't. You'll be sucked in and never seen again.) and midterm week. Blech. Well, have fun reading, and don't sue me cuz I own nothing._

Sarah was bathing her daughter when Jareth entered her room again.  He paused in the doorway of the bathroom, a small smile on his face as he watched her.   Leaning against the doorway, silent as a feline, he heard the new mother's laugh as the little baby kicked her feet and sent water splashing over the edge of the porcelain basin.   

"Silly," Sarah said.  She pulled the infant's body out of the water and gently wrapped her in a warm, soft cloth.  Jareth watched with an aching heart as she rested the baby against her shoulder, wrapped gentle arms around her.   She crooned nonsense words to the little infant, days old, rocking the baby gently.   Jareth knew there was nothing to fear ever again in regards to Sarah and her baby.  She had not wanted to love the child, but faced with the overwhelming sweetness of a newborn she'd really had no other option.   

"Lively little thing," Jareth said quietly, his voice lilting and amused.  Sarah didn't even jump, though he'd been hoping to startle her a little bit with his sudden appearance.  She turned around to find his eyes inches from hers.

"I can tell when you're here, you know," she said, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.   

"Can you now?" Jareth chuckled.   "What gave me away?"

She shrugged.  "I just…know."  

He smirked.  "Do you mind?"

"You tell me, since you claim to know me so well," Sarah shot back.  Jareth merely laughed and reached around her to touch the baby, tickle its soft stomach, before he disappeared.  

The abrupt exchange threw Sarah into confusion once again.  The infamous Goblin King, terror of her childhood, had now both given back a child without fighting for her, and now was being _kind_ to her.  Sarah shook her head.  She didn't think she'd ever understand that man.  

Jareth paced his throne room, wondering what next he could do to convince her of his intentions.  He couldn't be blatant—that just wasn't his way of doing things.   But…she didn't seem to be getting it.   He sighed.  What else could he do?  He had kissed her, wasn't that blatant enough?  Apparently not.  Well, then.   Maybe he could be a _little_ more blatant, though it irked him to do so.  It just wasn't his _way._  

But he wanted Sarah.  He wanted her so badly that he knew he would do nearly anything to have her, to keep her here with him for eternity.  If she wanted blatant, she'd get blatant.

*****

The gentle sound of pipes and drums lulled the red-bearded man on the throne into a semblance of complacency.   Not one of the pixies hovering around the well-lit hall doubted the terror he could cause if he so chose.   They feared him, their ruler.   He didn't play games.   

The grand hall was lit with torches that burned brightly without smoking, evidence of magic.  But there was even more powerful magic holding this place together.   It seeped in from the earth surrounding the entire palace, tainted so with years of faerie contact.   The entire hall reeked of magic, even the creatures wandering around within the room.   

The walls were hung with tapestries, most of warm reds and bright emeralds.  This was meant to disguise the fact—and did so rather well—that the walls were made of earth and the entire hall itself was dug out of the ground.   

What gave it away was the pale feathery roots lining the high ceiling and curling around the king's ivory throne.   Carved with hideous faces and beautiful flowers, the throne was both terror and wonder to behold.   The wall behind the king held no tapestry, but a painting of surpassing beauty, in which a likeness of the king bore an unconscious human maiden away, presumably toward his lair.   She was ethereal for a human, with pale skin, blood-red lips, and hair the color of ripe corn.   The king in the painting seemed to regard her as spoils from some waged battle.  She probably was.  

"My lord."

The words were not a question, and the king on the throne turned around slowly to regard the woman standing below the dais.   She was pale, but there her resemblance to the innocent creature in the painting ended.  This was a faerie woman, capable of vast damage and cruelty.   

Her hair was white, not like the silver of old people's hair, but completely devoid of coloring.  Sometimes, if she so pleased, it could seem to absorb tiny amounts of the color around it, but that was very seldom.  Today she was dressed in violent crimson, a color that should have been soaked up by her hair.  It was not.

Her eyes were dark pools, colder than water rushing over crystal or ice.  There was something about water in her movement and very glance as well.   It wasn't transience at all, but rather a kind of permanent beauty so perfect that it seemed too delicate to last.   

"What is it?" he asked.  Even in the king's tone, though his words were not formal, there was no question that he felt a certain fear of this creature.   She was not one to be taken lightly.

"I want another child," she said calmly.   

The king devoutly wished he had not handfasted himself to one such as her.  Her beauty had called to him that Beltane so many, many years ago.  It had sang in his blood, and the warrior wished for another conquest.  He had leaped the fires with her, so delicate-seeming and yet so strong.  Bruising strong, she was. She had not chosen to leave, and he had not the will to turn her out, though he knew she would land on her feet wherever she went.  She had her own palace under some other hill, it was certain, but for the past six hundred years—a mere eyeblink of their time—she had chosen to remain with him.   He had a sinking feeling that he amused her.

Now she was asking for another child.

"You have a stableful of them," he said, using the colloquial term.  "What do you want another for?"  

She pouted, the gesture actually appearing as a threat on her delicate face.  "I will turn it into a faerie for you, if you wish.  Another minion."

The king narrowed his eyes.   "I have no wish to be mixed up in your child-stealing.   Remember when you took the Giant Queen's infant?  There was war, Lady.   I will not mix my kingdom up in this anymore."

She stamped her pretty foot.   "It is only a human babe I wish to take," she cajoled.   "Come, we used to do it all the time.   They had to invent ways to keep us out.   Don't you remember?"

"A human?" The king looked skeptical.   For the first time, he contemplated the threads of gray that ran through his beard.  "What do you want with another human babe?"

She smiled cruelly, and her teeth glinted.   If she weren't faerie, the king would have sworn she was one of the Shadow Walkers.  "Revenge," she said simply, the word conveying all it needed to.

"Ah."  The king's countenance cleared and he waved his hand dismissively.   "Take what you wish, then, Lady.   But humans only.   I will not be caught up in another war within the Fae."

"Of course," she said, waving away his warning.   "Humans only, my lord."   With that she stepped quietly away, her actions almost demure.  The old king watched her, trepidation filling his heart as it had since she entered his life.

*****

Weeks passed, and the infant turned a month old.   She could see clearly, and reach for things, though she remained very tiny.  

One morning Sarah was sitting on her divan out on her balcony, holding her baby and trying to eat breakfast at the same time.   Jareth appeared, as he so often did these days, and deftly took the child from her arms.  

"Let me help you with that, love," he said.   The words were thrown out casually, and Sarah took no more notice of them than she had the first million times he had called her that.  He seldom followed up on his words, and there was no sign that the casual physical contact they had with each other was anything but accidental or friendly.   

Though Sarah was having a hard time convincing _her_ body of that.  It reacted whenever he was near, sending tendrils of heat through her veins and making her pulse race faster than it ought.  Even now as he settled himself on the divan with her, she felt the blood begin to pound.   _No_, she told it.   _Jareth doesn't mean anything like that._

Of course, he did.  

Today he drew her to him and she rested against his chest, her back to his front, as she bit into a section of orange and felt the juice explode into her mouth.  Jareth savored the sensation of touch, one arm cradling the infant and the other resting—casually—at Sarah's waist.  It was something that could conceivably be considered friendly, if the friends were very close.  

"Sarah," he said, his breath tickling the soft hair tucked behind her ear, "this little one is a month old now."   

"Yes," she agreed, craning her head back to look at him.  Jareth looked funny upside down.  His chin seemed abnormally large.

"Don't you think she should have a name by now?"

Sarah sighed.  "I know.  She seems like a part of me, though.  So much so that I sometimes forget that she should have a name, a separate identity.   You don't name part of your soul."

Her last words seemed strange to Jareth, foreign.   "For Fae," he said, voicing his thoughts, "names are sacred things, tied to our magic, our being."

"Is that why you can hear me if I call your name?"

"Partially," he allowed.  "Certainly when anybody else does it."  

Sarah froze.  Here it was, the dangerous thing that made her different from the "everybody else" Jareth spoke lightly of.  She didn't know if she wanted to face this, especially so early in the day, but….   After a month of wondering and waiting, she had to know.  She turned around slowly, craning her neck, and stared into the goblin king's mismatched eyes.   "Why am I so different?" she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

Jareth's eyes darkened, and with a swift movement of his arm he had placed the child back in her cradle and used the now-free hand to cup Sarah's face in his palm.  "Because you are Sarah," he said quietly, "and I am Jareth."   

It was the simplest answer he could give her, not knowing that such things were better said with the tiny, frightening "I love you" words.  She looked confused at what he had said, her eyebrows drawing together, and with a curse Jareth tried the one thing he hadn't done yet.  He leaned down and kissed her.  

The last time he had kissed her, a playful nearly-chaste touch of his lips against hers, was nothing like this.   She both smelled and tasted of the half-eaten orange that lay forgotten on her breakfast tray, a citrus taste that burned and mixed with the scent of her milk and of her soft, soft skin.   Her mouth was softer than rose petals, softer than the brush of hair against his cheek, and now that they were locked in such intimate contact, he could feel how she wanted him, how his little tricks of speech and seemingly-innocent touches through the past month had affected her.  

_She certainly hid it well,_ he thought smugly, _but she is mine now._  

But she was trembling in his grip, and so he gently eased away and stared into her foggy eyes.  Softly blue and hazy, they peered up at him through the mantle of her dark hair.  "What—" she started to say, but the look on the goblin king's face took her words away.   

"Sarah, you belong here," he said.   "With me."  

She shook her head in confusion.   "But—but I am—"   She stopped, rubbed her eyes, and tried again.   "I am not…whole…Jareth.   I love it here in the Labyrinth.   But—"  She cast her eyes down to the cradle.  

"Love, I _want_ you," he said, becoming slightly frustrated at her apparent lack of understanding.   "_Both_ of you.  You are everything to me, and she is as sweet a babe as one could ever hope to find.  You belong here, and I don't care about anything else."  

She looked skeptically up at him, and he sighed, turning her in his arms so that she could face him without craning her neck like that.  "Sarah, what happened to jade you so badly?" he asked.  "Not all people are here to hurt you.  Precious girl, I could never hurt you.  What will it take for you to trust me?"  He looked at her, really looked, and she felt his eyes staring straight to her soul.   Sarah shuddered at the terrible, wonderful threat in his gaze.  Mismatched, both ice and fire but nothing safely warm lay within those eyes.

"You are a woman grown now, Sarah.   I grow weary of constantly being a mask, of hiding myself to keep your childish illusions alive."   His eyes burned as he leaned closer to her.   "I love you, Sarah.   You have the strength within you to become immortal.  Beautiful girl."   Jareth reached out and traced one finger down her shiny waterfall of hair as it flowed past her shoulder.   "Please.  Trust me."

He saw the war going on within her eyes, knew that whatever decision she made here and now would last for eternity.   It was too soon, too soon to ask this of her even after her month living within his castle.  But he couldn't wait any longer.  It took all his willpower not to cast a spell of simple coercion, but he knew he couldn't.  This had to be Sarah's decision alone.

She burst into tears.

Strangely enough, Jareth didn't think this was the end of the game.  He reached out and touched her warm shoulder.  Sarah stepped forward, into his arms, and she clasped her hands at his back, holding him.  

"Dear one," Jareth whispered, and he enveloped her in his strong, warm embrace.  She cried into his shoulder, her arms holding him tightly.  

"But…" she whimpered.  "Can I damn my baby to the Underground?"

Jareth pulled away just far enough to look into her eyes, a little wounded that she thought a life here would be a life damned.   "Can you damn her to a life up there?" he asked, cocking his head to the side and indicating upwards.   

A flicker of surprise flitted across her face and she nearly smiled, but then she frowned again.  "But…"

"Hush now.  I want that child to remain human, and to be raised by both of us."   He touched his lips to hers, kissed her nose and forehead and the little space between her eyebrows.   "Please, Sarah.   Will you not stay?"

"But what's in it for you?" Sarah demanded.   "I don't mean to sound unkind, but you don't do anything without some gain to yourself."

"Few people do, child," Jareth murmured.   "I want you because I love you, no other reason.  And I want the child because she is a part of you."  He looked at her, really looked at her in the damned infuriating way he had, where his eyes seemed to burn away all her defenses.  "I will make her my heir, Sarah, if you let me.   No harm shall come to either of you."   

She leaned against him, weary of the argument, tears still flowing.  "I _do_ love you, Jareth," she said quietly.  "I have since I met you the last time, when I faced you.   Since the ballroom…" Her voice trailed off, and one of his hands snaked around her waist, rested possessively against her stomach.   

"Do you trust me?" he asked.   

There was a long silence before she answered.   "I trust you, Goblin King."   

Jareth's arm tightened, and he added his other one.   Sarah didn't seem to mind.   "Then I would ask of you a boon, Sarah."

"What?" she asked warily, refusing to agree to anything until she knew what it was.  

"Tell me.  Tell me what happened."


End file.
